NYC Digital Printers willing to do small issue runs?

November 28, 2009 8:48 PM

Do you know a good printer in NYC who will be willing to do super-tiny runs (say, 5 issues) of digital printing and binding of books?

I'm looking for a printer in the NYC area (preferably Brooklyn or Manhattan) who'd be willing to (digitally) print and bind a ~40 page document, Letter with bleeds, color, perfect bound, around 5 issues. Price is not really an issue, but speed is -- ideally, the next day or next next day would be wonderful but I know that's asking for a lot.

I'm super comfortable with InDesign/pdf/press requirements so I'm not looking for anyone who has to retouch anything -- I can provide PDFs with bleeds/crop/registration marks with fonts embedded, etc. The most important thing is that the printer would be able to do perfect binding and that their turnaround time is quick.

I know I'm asking a lot, but do you have any recommendations for such a good, fast, reliable printer who'd be willing to work on such a minuscule run?

Thaaanks!

posted by suedehead to media & arts (8 comments total)

The company for which I work does significant printing (1 million pages a month). Can you send a sample PDF and I'll send a price?
posted by esemay at 10:03 PM on November 28, 2009

Why not try Blurb.com? You can do single copy up to hundreds, and they can convert directly from PDF to book.

I've made a couple of photo books with them and the experience was great. Their software is pretty great, though you wouldn't be using it, and the quality of the end product was better than I expected. They're certainly not the same as other photo book producers - they're actual store quality books.
posted by pkingdesign at 11:53 PM on November 28, 2009

pkingdesign, thanks for the suggestion, but Blurb's turnaround time is 5-6 business days + shipping time. On top of that, it's the holiday season so their dates are all delayed. I've got a hard deadline coming up and I need as much time as possible, gack!
posted by suedehead at 12:31 AM on November 29, 2009

esemay, I couldn't find your email so I MefiMailed you! Thanks!

Any other advice, anybody?
posted by suedehead at 12:32 AM on November 29, 2009

Or lulu.com
posted by CarlRossi at 12:59 AM on November 29, 2009

CarlRossi, thanks, but lulu.com's the same, complicated holiday deadlines, etc. Ideally I'm looking for a local printer someone's used before for a small print run.
posted by suedehead at 1:07 AM on November 29, 2009

I havn't used a new york-based book binder, but any place which advertises "thesis binding" or "dissertation binding" will do print runs so short they can hardly be called runs - as in, 2 or 3 copies.
posted by Mike1024 at 2:37 AM on November 29, 2009

For the record, and this was 2 years ago, Blurb's quality was terrible. I'd love to hear that it has gotten better in the interim.
posted by sully75 at 5:04 AM on November 29, 2009